THE ‘SACRIFICIAL LAMBS’ OF THE PEACE CELEBRATION DAY

Ayom Makuei, a bright young lawyer who was shot in the head by ‘Unknown Gunmen’ of Juba, passed on on the eve of the much trumped up ‘Peace Celebration Day’.

Of course, the only officially gazetted news was the speeches and dances on the desecrated tomb of Dr. John Garang. Those who attempted to share news of violation of peace on such a young man or on the gunmen attacks on Duk, Jalle, Mangalatore, Tore, Wau, Gok, etc. were condemned as ‘peace spoilers’ and recommended to be attended to by those who usually become ‘unknown gunman’ after the act is executed.

Therefore, I had to abstain from commenting on a ‘Peace Day’ about Moulana Ayom’s assassination because my detailed message would be derailed by the counter-activists hell-bent on propagandizing the public on the verbal decreeing of the total peace by Their Excellencies. However, as good citizens, we must always question any careless death of a fellow citizen, even if killed by a malaria because there is somebody being paid from our public coffers to protect the citizens from diseases.

Collective blame by the public is allowed by the constitution on the authorities. For instance, the Americans are blaming their president, Donald Trump, for inciting racial hatred as most Blacks and other minor races fall victim to police and other gunmen.

Similarly, if the death of such a young man occurred at night upon returning from the club, and there was an umbrella accusation of club revellers as criminals or ‘niggers’, to use the statement the police boss made in Juba that very week, then any frickingly free-speaking citizen is justified to question the government policies and their capacity to provide security to the country as their primary role.

The week before the peace week had seen two blunders by the government that could have a huge boomerang on the local population: the arrest and imprisonment of sex workers and the closing down of nightclubs and killing of the ‘niggers’. My argument is that any blanket condemnation by those wielding state power is always detrimental to the innocent people.

Personally, I was devastated by the news of his demise in the hands of the ‘unknown’ fellow citizens. The shooting of Ayom and his colleagues by a gunmen who is dressed in an official uniform is very unfortunate. In countries run on rule of law and genuine peace, the work of the police is to provide protection to such people, not to have them shot dead or have their livelihoods shut down.

To be more specific, my utter disappointment is especially on the memory of our conversation at South Sudanese Restaurant that the late and I had the day before he left Nairobi for Juba two years ago. Joking about his safety in Juba, he said his main worry is finding a well-deserving job, not the so-called ‘unknown gunmen’. My caution on him was actually those so-called unknown gunmen, given the fact that he was by that moment living in the house of Gen. Mac Paul as he used to drive him around in Nairobi.

This young man was an orphan whose father, the late Makuei Khor, donated his life to the Liberation Movement (under SPLM/A) as the children were raised under very hard conditions by their mother, Yar Ayom Dor. The late Ayom Makuei was dilligently educated into a modern lawyer from the University of Nairobi by his uncles, the late Amb. Majok Ayom Dor and Gen. Malual Ayom Dor, among others. By this background, I still maintain that the loser is not only the family but the Republic of South Sudan. So, somebody is really betraying this nation by killing either directly or by negligence this future generation.

Back to the D-Day messaging, I actually read up to 5 posts from my fellow youth who are ‘celebrating’ in Juba, and who obviously (even ‘enviously’) lash out at the ‘Paytriots paid by Khawaja (TROIKA) to spoil our peace.” From these ‘good boys’, bitterness is almost, as always, in the tone of “death to them who betray our nation!” This article is likely to be definitely classified under that category of ‘those tarnishing the image of the nation”. The officially enhanced narrative is that the ones protesting these kiilings, corruption and immorality are the ‘enemies of the people’, not the perpetrators being condemned.

However, one puzzling observation about this ‘pro-leaders defence league’, the real ‘paytriots’, is that up to 5 of the hate posts were put up (as usual) by our Diaspora returnees, the so-called ‘Lost Boys’, majority of whom are the architects of the state-sponsored terror that is now keeping our refugee returnees aloof, a real threat to a lay people’s peace in South Sudan.

On seeing this envious vitriol from the sycophants’ resistance against the real peace picture that the leaders need from the ground, my heart bleed! And I am left wondering what the West, which they have now turned into our imaginary enemies, have taught this lot! I would rather those Western universities that churn them out recall them for ‘reality check training’.

It is utterly embarrassing to see our very own ‘liberators’ and their ‘liberated’ turning round to use the very language that displaced them to the West those days: ‘Khawaja collaborators’!

I mean, it is beyond hypocritical for a young man in Juba, and whose village members were burying the dead on the same day, to attempt to force the world into believing that the 6-hour paper-based peace celebration and self-worshipping ceremony of the region’s dictators, some of whom are ICC candidates and pre-candidates thereof, or of the Hybrid Court, means total peace. Period!

In conclusion, I am (we are) not against peace; rather we are for the Revitalized ARCISS, hence for it’s critical implementstion, and against that hypocritical show of it. You know the benchmark of any true peace is peace itself, including peace of mind from posting or reading this opinion. Again, true peace is one where there is no killing of our young Ayoms on the altar — as peace feast lambs!

Rest in peace Comrade Ayom Makuei and my cousins who were killed in Jalle, Duk and elsewhere on the peace day.

YOU’RE WELL? COME!

Dear Ready Reader, Since it is my belief that a good reader is a good leader, I cordially welcome and encourage you to explore my literal mind and exploit my literary mine in this poetic wordware. I hope you are not that pessimistic critic – not a somber leader but a sober reader – who is ever ready to give me their unique critiques on my Pennique techniques; just as my previous readers had with me as their text collector (or corrector and connector) of news, views, interviews, reviews, overviews, previews, purviews, and all the free views expressed in the process of my rioting by writing when my nascent nation is trudging through her era of error. To be Pennically jealous and Penniquely zealous, just as I would not want Juba defined and designed with Sheik Zubeir’s architecture, I would not want my pages pasted and passages plastered with Shakespeare’s literature; and neither would I want my messages massaged with Achebe’s achievers flavours, nor my torturous tales tailored with Tutuola's tutorials. Yet again, if this is not understandable – lo, we go!— (From Preface to my poetry book (manuscript, 'The Black Christs of Africa'

Jon Pen

CALLOUS CALLOUT? Well, here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays this blog and 'The Black Christs of Africa'— the book and its sequels. Lo we go…! (From Preface to 'The Black Christs of Africa' (manuscript)

Pennavatar

However, what I found out during my six years of a hide-and-seek game with a 'real publisher of books' was but a real publisher of names; of names of those who have already published books. Since I did not have any name, yet, to be published and sold, I just landed on an e-printer and a printer handy, to me, the real publisher of words. In the truest sense of these words, this (Master Text Collector Ltd.) is the real publisher of books; one who looks at the book of a writer and not the writer of a book. Therefore, if I were the president of a ‘Republic of Literatia’, I would make that a decree to publish not the literary pedigree but the literary degree in a very mannered script of every manuscript. Lo, we go…!

Textleak

ABOUTLEAKS:
Of my style as from my works of poetry:

"Well, there is one fact I have to admit from their cynicism, but omit from my Pennicism and commit to our criticism as we trudge along in this world of invention. The fact is, if my work is unconventional, then it is because I did not attend that Literary Convention hosted by patrons and matrons of an ‘Art Convent’– in case of any – during those days when God created the World by the Word in the ‘Universe of Artitecture’. So spare me this deliberate circumvention for my own literary convention conducted in a series of serious conferences only within the circumference of my upper room, call it, Head Hall. Lo, we go…!
So here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays, The Black Christs of Africa— this book and its sequels. Lo we go…! "